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Howard County will spend $400,000 over the next two years on a program designed to accelerate the commercialization of new technology developed by the county’s scientists, the Baltimore Sun reported.

County Executive Kenneth Ulman, who is running for lieutenant governor as the running mate of Lt. Gov. Anthony G. Brown, announced the program Thursday, which is a new partnership between the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory and the Howard County Economic Development Authority.

Only in the distorted reality of startups and venture capital would this plan seem daring: Mhelpdesk.com LLC is refusing outside cash, operating lean and scaling with its own revenue. Instead of holding its hand out to investors, the Dulles-based field-service software startup has opted to pour its efforts into selling, meanwhile leaving their equity intact.

Emergent Biosolutions (EBS) is a commercial stage biotech that produces the only FDA approved anthrax vaccine. The company derives nearly all of its revenue from sales of BioThrax, its only marketed product, to the US Government. Currently, nearly all of Emergent’s revenue comes from a contract with the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) that ends in September 2016.

To a cautious investor, a company with a single customer is bathed in red light. However, Emergent is attempting a transition. Lets see how its going.

Johns Hopkins has often been honored with respectable titles, but none quite as prestigious as the one bestowed on the school by the Academic Ranking of World Universities this year. Named the No. 4 best medical school in the world, Johns Hopkins professes an impeccable record of remarkable alum and highly cited researchers, not to mention its other claim to fame: top hospital in the nation, according to U.S. News & World Report.

The ARWU ranked institutions according to a series of indicators and weights, scoring schools on their academic or research performance in the field of medicine. The ranking — developed by the Center for World-Class Universities of Shanghai Jiao Tong University — looked at the number of alums who have won Nobel Prizes in Physiology or Medicine since ’61; staff who have won Nobel Prizes in Physiology or Medicine since ’71; cited researchers in the categories of Clinical Medicine, Pharmacology, and Social Sciences; articles indexed in Science Citation Index and the percentage of papers actually published in the top 20 percent of medicine journals.

Washington: A group of researchers have made a significant breakthrough for figuring out which mutations are benign and which are deleterious in cystic fibrosis.

Researchers have now raised the number of known CF-causing mutations from 22 to 127, accounting for 95 percent of the variations found in patients with CF.

The scientists said that characterizing those additional mutations in the cystic fibrosis transmembrane conductance regulator (CFTR) gene will not only bring certainty to families about a CF diagnosis or carrier status, but will also accelerate the design process for new drugs tailored to a particular mutation.

Image Courtesy of cooldesign / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Q:I am in the mid-stages of my career. I’ve been climbing the corporate ladder for a while with some success. Lately, I’ve been reading about how corporate entities want to hire those who think entrepreneurially. In fact, where I work, I’ve heard our top management talk about it. To be honest with you, I’m not really sure how to act on it or develop the thinking. Can you recommend some good reads or blogs?

Elana Fine: Eric Ries’ “The Lean Startup” talks about entrepreneurship within existing corporations, such as Intuit, and with start-up ventures that are more typically thought of as “entrepreneurial.” Similar skills apply in both cases — identifying a problem/solution, building a product on limited resources while testing hypotheses, establishing relationships with key partners and channels, etc.

Image Courtesy of David Castillo Dominici / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

AstraZeneca today announced that MedImmune, its global biologics research and development arm, has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Amplimmune, a privately-held, Maryland, US-based biologics company focused on developing novel therapeutics in cancer immunology.

The acquisition will bolster MedImmune’s oncology pipeline by obtaining multiple early-stage assets for its immune-mediated cancer therapy (IMT-C) portfolio, including AMP-514, an anti-programmed cell death 1 (PD-1) monoclonal antibody (mAb). AMP-514 is currently in late-stage pre-clinical development with the aim of an investigational new drug (IND) filing before the end of 2013. Other Amplimmune assets include multiple preclinical molecules targeting the B7 pathways. MedImmune’s oncology research is focused on IMT-C, a promising therapeutic approach that may lead to durable and prolonged response rates across a range of cancer types. IMT-Cs are being designed to empower the immune system to counteract the tactics employed by cancer cells to avoid detection and attack the body.

On Wednesday August 21st, 80+ people filled the BHI parking lot for an evening of networking, eating crabs, and enjoying a relaxed, stress-free atmosphere. Represented was a who’s who of the Montgomery County biohealth community and the local county government.

Thank you to everyone who made it out and we hope to see you again next time!

Only in the distorted reality of startups and venture capital would this plan seem daring: Mhelpdesk.com LLC is refusing outside cash, operating lean and scaling with its own revenue.

Instead of holding its hand out to investors, the Dulles-based field-service software startup has opted to pour its efforts into selling, meanwhile leaving their equity intact.